Updated 10:40 am, Thursday, April 14, 2016

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Joe Edward LaRue, 52, challenges the decades-old DNA evidence used to convict him in the death of Donna Pentecost, a 33-year-old Port Neches woman whose naked dead body was found in her backyard in Oct. 15, 1989, with her skull crushed. less

Joe Edward LaRue, 52, challenges the decades-old DNA evidence used to convict him in the death of Donna Pentecost, a 33-year-old Port Neches woman whose naked dead body was found in her backyard in Oct. 15, ... more

A 25-year legal battle between local law enforcement and a man convicted in the 1989 killing of a Port Neches woman could soon be resolved by the state's highest criminal court.

The Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday granted a discretionary review of Joe Edward LaRue's request for post-conviction DNA testing. That means the court will hear his reasons for wanting the tests. It does not mean his request will be fulfilled.

LaRue, 52, was convicted of capital murder in 2005 in connection with the Oct. 15, 1989, death of his co-worker, Donna Pentecost.

The 33-year-old Port Neches woman was found dead in her backyard. She had been sexually assaulted and her skull crushed with a concrete block.

LaRue, sentenced to life in prison, has spent years disputing DNA test results that link him to the murder, claiming he had oral sex with Pentecost, but that he did not kill her.

LaRue was originally indicted on capital murder in 1991. That case was dismissed in 1994 because prosecutors did not believe they could get a conviction based upon the evidence they had, according to previous Enterprise coverage.

Advances in DNA technology were credited in November 2001 with LaRue's re-indictment on the same charge.

He has maintained since his initial arrest that Pentecost was alive when he left her at her home.

According to court documents, LaRue was initially one of six suspects in Pentecost's murder.

He is requesting a re-testing of the oral swabs taken from Pentecost, the hair found on her hand, a cigarette butt recovered from the scene, a bloody fingerprint found on a door, the fingernail scrapings taken from Pentecost, and blood samples from a T-shirt worn by another potential suspect.

The Ninth Court of Appeals last year backed a state judge's 2014 ruling denying this request. The higher court found that LaRue failed to establish, "by a preponderance of the evidence," that he would not have been convicted of Pentecost's murder.

Even if re-testing shows new results, it would not exonerate LaRue or remove him from the crime scene, Justice Leanne Johnson wrote in the Ninth Court's ruling.

"It would only show that an additional person was at the scene or, at most, may have been involved in the crime," Johnson wrote.

In response to the October ruling, LaRue's attorney, Walter Reaves Jr., based in Waco, said he would challenge the ruling with the Court of Criminal Appeals.

No date has been set for the discretionary review.

LaRue alleges in his motion that previous DNA testing done in the early 2000s was confusing and produced inconsistent results.

Ron Singer, who worked at the Jefferson County crime lab at the time, said in an affidavit that problems with the collection raised the possibility that it might not have been LaRue's DNA recovered from Pentecost's oral swab.

Reaves Jr. argues a new blood sample from LaRue could be compared to the oral swabs, producing more accurate results.

LaRue escaped a possible death penalty sentence by waiving his right to a jury trial in 2005.